Interview with Kate Mosse, author of Labyrinth and Sepulchre - This French Life This French Life Interview with Kate Mosse, author of Labyrinth and Sepulchre THE bloody history of medieval Carcassone was brought to life in the international best-selling book Labyrinth. And now its author Kate Mosse takes us back to the south west with her latest book Sepulchre, a tale from the dark woods of the Corbières involving ghosts, murder and tarot cards. Here I chat with Kate about the mystery of the region and her writing life - also find out how to win a copy of Sepulchre - and so my first question was what frights can people expect from the new book? Sepulchre is part ghost story and part tarot tale, set in two different time periods, the 1890s in Paris and the south west of France and modern day Paris as well as the area around Rennes les Bains.

It is about a young girl and her brother in the 1890s who are sent to stay with their aunt in this creepy house in the woods and when they get there they discover a strange Sepulchre hidden in the ground and within there is hidden a pack of tarot cards. Then 110 years later an American researcher who is down in the area comes across the ruined Sepulchre and realises the story of the tarot cards is all still going and that there are many secrets that have not yet been uncovered. So it’s very much a page turning, read it with the door shut and the lights turned on type of book. How frightening was it for you to work on the new book after the success of Labyrinth? It was a bit intimidating, because it is a wonderful thing to have millions of readers of Labyrinth with many people kind enough to write, email or come to events to tell you how it is one of their favourite books, so you do feel this great sense of not letting people down and you want the next book to be as successful. You want people to really enjoy it so that they won’t feel disappointed.

So before I got down to writing I felt I very much had the shadow of Labyrinth over me, but once you start it’s the same as any piece of writing really, what you are thinking about is ‘does this chapter work, are these characters doing what I want them to do, is the story unravelling as I thought it would’. So once you actually get going you forget about everything except writing one sentence after another. It’s clear from both books that you love the history of the south west of France, so where did your research take you? I haven’t visited anywhere because we’ve had a house in Carcassone for 18 years so that’s where we go, the problem with having a house is that you tend to only go there rather than travel around the place. For some years I wanted to write about Rennes les Bains, not its famous neighbour Rennes les Chateau, out of which so many of the Holy Grail stories have come, but more because Rennes les Bains in the Pyrenees was this incredibly chic and thriving spa town in the 1890s and now it is this tiny, quiet, little village, that’s a very nice place.

But it was just so interesting to compare it to the pictures and reports of the place in the 1890s to the present day, so I had it in the back of my mind that I would like to write about there. So Rennes les Bains, Couiza, Esperaza and Limoux are places we visit a lot when we are home in Carcassone, as it is a very different sort of atmosphere to the medieval past of the city, it is much more domestic, if you like, and it is more about the greenness of the mountains. And I very much like the woods around Rennes les Bains, I find it a very inspiring atmosphere to write about. What do you “see” when you walk around Carcassone and the region, as I suppose the history must almost ooze out of the walls? One of the things I was looking forward to writing about in this new book was to write about Carcassone in the 1890s when the town hall made a decision to be a tourist destination.

Because people most probably know about the present day and the medieval past, but it was a quite conscious decision, on the part of the town, to invent itself as a place for tourists and so the city was restored over a period of time to encourage tourists to come and visit. So when I was researching for Labyrinth I thought that one day if I get the opportunity I would love to write about the 1890s moment, when the city became a place where people went. And I thought that it is not just that the history is there but that it is a conscious, crucial part of the present of the region and is therefore maximised everywhere, so it is not a random thing if you like, that the history is so evident it is very much part of a plan to make it a place that people visited. Do you see Labyrinth being used by the tourism industry in Carcassone, how do you feel about that? I’m a bit mixed about it really, because on the one hand you are delighted as I spent years and years writing both books, so seeing people reading them is fantastic.

When we were in Carcassone in the summer there was someone waiting to go into the Cateau Comtal holding a copy of Labyrinth who asked me if I’d read it. And I heard myself saying no. So it feels like a public thing. I’m told by French friends in Carcassone that the French guides also use Labyrinth for describing things, I don’t know if that’s true or not. But on the other hand one of the reasons behind writing Labyrinth, and now Sepulchre , was to say these are amazing places, so go and visit them for yourself. So it was a conscious way of trying to share my real love of the region. Sepulchre is very much about the green Corbieres, very much about Limoux and the south and I do want people to go and find the amazing landscape and find out what a great place it is. How different is a writing day in France compared to one in the UK? Do you undertake different projects in each country? No, a lot of writers have one place where they can work, and are very set, but I’m not really like that.

I have a tiny little laptop and find that I work just as well in my home in England as I do in Carcassone, the only thing that is common to both is that I start very early, carry on through the morning and a little after lunch, then I clock off. And that is the same whether I am in Sussex or in Carcassone, I just work better in the early mornings. If I’m researching I have a different pattern but when I’m actually writing, I work for eight hours a day, seven days a week until it is done. Everybody knows that I disappear into this awful tunnel. But I always write in my pyjamas, so I think a lot of people must think I am a long term invalid. I don’t think about it but the postman most probably thinks I’m ill. Where does the love affair for France come from, would you have written the books if you’d not lived there? No, well at least they would have been very different books. I had in my mind a series of novels that were part historical, part contemporary that used mythological items, or mystical items, such as Grail legend, or in this case tarot.

But I had thought Labyrinth would have been set in ancient Egypt actually, it was a consequence of buying the house in Carcassone, which came about by a series of random coincidences, it could have been anywhere, it just happened that my mother-in-law had a friend who was an estate agent, who had a twinning agreement with an agent in Carcassone. And that is what is so terrifying, if she had a twinning somewhere else, who knows what would have happened. But when I got to the region I just fell completely in love with it and felt it was the landscape of my imagination. So it’s not that I wouldn’t have written the novels, it is just that they would have been different books. Sepulchre would not have happened if we didn’t know Rennes les Bains, and Labyrinth wouldn’t have either if I hadn’t discovered Cathar history. Are you looking to France as the background for future books? I doubt if my next book will be set in France. I feel that as a novelist you have to keep some of the elements that you know your readers like, but not jus repeat the same thing over.

So Sepulchre and Labyrinth were conceived as a pair, two different time periods, but the same sort of area. But I suspect the next one will not be set in France, I think it would be good to have the challenge of writing in a different sort of landscape, so I think next time I am more likely to be writing about Egypt. You will find out more about Sepulchre by Kate Mosse on Amazon, and if you go on to buy a copy I receive a small commission that helps go towards the upkeep of This French Life. Next time you send money to another country: don't use your bank Learn how to keep more of your own money with a free guide from CurrencyFair and over the next few days find out how I have saved using their service as well as other tips and advice. Sign up with your email address below: 100% Privacy. Email address will never be sold to another company. Unsubscibe when you wish. The Languedoc Trilogy by Kate Mosse | Aude France The Languedoc Trilogy by Kate Mosse Posted on August 20, 2013 by Stephanie That’s Kate Mosse the writer not Kate Moss the super model.

The three books in Kate Mosse’s best- selling Languedoc trilogy are “ Labyrinth ”, “ Sepulchre ” and “ Citadel ”, each one set in or around Carcassonne at an important point in the city’s history and in each one Carcassonne itself has a starring role. Kate Mosse’s own interest in the Languedoc started when she and her husband bought a small house just outside Carcassonne’s Cité back in 1989. She has said that she feels history is alive in the Languedoc and this is reflected in the way her books are written, slipping between different time periods. She also includes words or phrases (with translations) in Occitan in the books, which adds to their atmosphere. The first book “Labyrinth” is set in 13th century Carcassonne, at the time of the crusade by the Catholic Church against the Cathars. The heroine is Alais, a young girl from a Cathar family. In the 21st century time-slip story Alice Tanner, a young archaeologist, discovers two skeletons in a forgotten cave in the Pyrenees.

The next book “Sepulchre” moves to the late 19th century and to an isolated country house near Carcassonne, where 17 year old Leonie Vernier finds a ruined sepulchre. A pack of old tarot cards play an important part in the book, reflecting the interest in mysticism and the supernatural at that era in France. This time the 21st century story has a young American woman, Meredith Martin, arriving at the same country house to research a biography. The final book “Citadel” takes place at the time of the Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War. Young Sandrine who lives in the Bastide, Carcassonne’s lower town, becomes a member of an all-female group of French resistance fighters. At the front of the book is a map of the Bastide and it’s interesting to locate events in the book on the map, particularly if you know the place. The time slip goes back to the story of a young monk in 4th century Languedoc. The final chapter is a spectacular end to the whole trilogy.

The books are not highbrow literature, but good yarns and worth reading if you are interested in the area and its history. The best way to describe them is that they are historical adventure stories in which women are the active heroines. However the books in the trilogy are lengthy reads. If you feel like starting with something set in the Languedoc but a bit shorter try Kate Mosse’s “ The Winter Ghosts ”, which moves between the 1930s and the time of the Cathars. Both my twenty-something sons (one a voracious reader, the other not) read this book in a day when on holiday at our house in Castelnaudary. That’s probably the best time to read one or all of these books, on holiday, if you want something entertaining but not too challenging. Best of all probably if you are on holiday in the Languedoc. About Stephanie Stephanie and her husband are the proud owners of an 18th century townhouse in Castelnaudary.

The need to earn a living means they spend more time at their offices in England and less time in Castelnaudary than they would like, but having a home in the Aude gives them something to dream about. Kate Mosse's top 10 ghost stories | Books | The Guardian Top 10s Kate Mosse's top 10 ghost stories From Henry James to Susan Hill, the author of Labyrinth selects tales that deliver 'the fun of the shudder' Shudders ... Rebecca Evans in English National Opera's production of The Turn of the Screw. Photograph: Tristram Kenton Wednesday 27 October 2010 06.24 EDT First published on Wednesday 27 October 2010 06.24 EDT Share on Messenger Close Kate Mosse is the bestselling author of five novels, two books of non-fiction, short stories and a play, Syrinx, which won a Broadcasting Press Guild award in 2009.

The first novel in her Languedoc Trilogy, Labyrinth, won Richard & Judy's Best Read award in 2006 and topped the bestseller lists for six months; the second, Sepulchre, was also an international bestseller; and the third, Citadel, will be published in 2011. Her current novel, The Winter Ghosts, is published in paperback this week. Buy The Winter Ghosts from the Guardian bookshop "Spirits and apparitions, headless monks and white ladies, the traditional ghost story still exerts a hold on our imaginations. Their habitat is ancient woods, ruined abbeys, isolated old houses and crumbling monasteries. But what makes a ghost story? Though purists might quibble, I'd say there are three distinct types of ghost story – as opposed to tales of horror, which have a different dynamic and purpose, or novels that have ghosts in them, such as Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude or Ben Okri's The Famished Road. "The traditional ghost story is often inspired by folklore and a sense of decaying history, and is similar in tone to the Gothic novels that came before it.

In the psychological ghost story, the emphasis is on the mental state of the victim rather than the actions – the existence, even – of the ghost or poltergeist. These stories implicitly, sometimes explicitly, question the reliability and sanity of the heroine or hero, and often reference social or political issues of the day. Finally, there's the antiquarian ghost story which is associated with a certain sort of Edwardian Englishness. Like their traditional counterparts, they draw on old mythologies and folklore, but are rooted in realism and the sense of the ordinary disrupted or made extraordinary. I see the influence of all three traditions in my own books – though The Winter Ghosts is my first pure ghost story – but in the end, as with the choices that follow, what matters is that each has what the great Edith Wharton called 'the fun of the shudder'." 1. "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe (1843) From the master of the morbid imagination, this gem of a story blurs the edges between horror and ghost fiction. A murderer's guilty conscience gets the better of him, driving him to confess his crime. The unnamed narrator murders an old man with a "vulture eye".

He plans carefully and hides the body by dismembering it, but his guilt will not let him rest. Is he imagining the beating of the heart beneath the floorboards or is there something there? Gripping and horrifying, the perfect mix of horror and Gothic, the forerunner of the psychological ghost stories that were to come into vogue. 2. "The Signalman" by Charles Dickens (1866) This perfectly balanced, beautifully judged story both preys on both the anxiety provoked by the new technology of railways and deeply held beliefs that a ghost can be an alarum for events to follow. Three times, the ringing of a spectral bell is followed by the appearance of a ghost, harbinger of a dreadful accident. Creepy, clever, and has you looking over your own shoulder. 3. "At Chrighton Abbey" by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1871) Another classic of ghost-story writing, with a doomed family and a crumbling, historic house at the heart of it. The narrator, Sarah, returns to her childhood home as a guest, having been obliged to work as a governess.

There, although the halls are brightly lit and the old servants delighted to see her, a sense of disaster hangs over the festivities and Sarah's glimpse of a ghostly hunt forewarns of tragedy to come. 4. "Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book" by MR James (1894) This is the very first story in the first published MR James collection, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. A young Englishman and scholar leaves his friends for the day to spend time alone in a claustrophobic, decaying French cathedral city in the Pyrenees. He is encouraged by the sacristan to buy an antique manuscript volume which is possessed of older and evil memories. Wonderfully atmospheric, wonderfully creepy. 5. "The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James (1898) This is, possibly, the most exquisite and perfect of all psychological ghost stories. Again, an unnamed narrator, another governess, a different manuscript that claims to tell the story of mysterious country house, a widower and his children and two ghosts of former servants of the house. It is never clear if the ghosts are real or the product of the governess's increasingly unstable mind.

And here, unlike in many ghost stories, there are several strong and engaging characters, not least of all the strange children, Miles and Flora. Simply, a masterpiece. 6. Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Stories by Algernon Blackwood (1912) Blackwood is the neglected master of the Edwardian ghost story renaissance. Gentlemen travellers and scholars fill his pages, but always with a psychological – often animist – slant on things. For Blackwood, Nature always has a capital 'N' and was a living, breathing thing, sometimes benign, but often sinister. This collection is the place to start, even though my favourite story is "The Man Whom the Trees Loved" , where a wife finds herself powerless to save her husband from the trees he loves. The forest does seem to be alive, getting closer and closer to the house, until the husband vanishes all together. Atmospheric, beautiful, a very subtle story of a peculiar haunting. 7.

"The Listeners" by Walter de la Mare (1912) De la Mare was a significant writer of ghost stories, publishing some 40 supernatural tales in collections such as Eight Tales and On the Edge, but I'm choosing perhaps his most famous work, this lyrical and haunting poem. It's never clear what bargain the traveller has made, and with whom, only that he has kept his word to come to the deserted house in the wood. The opening line still makes my hair stand on end: "'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller, knocking on the moonlit door." 8. "Bewitched" by Edith Wharton (1925) The celebrated author of novels such as The House of Mirth, Wharton was also a terrific writer of ghostly tales. A blend of Poe, Hawthorne and Henry James, she has a lightness of touch that belies the often very grisly tale. This story, first published in the Pictorial Review in 1925, has a fabulous sense of place and is a revenant story with a twist. It leaves the reader doubting their interpretation of events. Clever stuff. 9.

"The Ghosts" by Antonia Barber (1969) This is my favourite children's ghost story, a wonderful time-slip novel set during the first world war. Lucy and Jamie Allen move with their mother and baby brother to the country, where their mother has been engaged by a mysterious gentleman, Mr Blunden, as caretaker of an abandoned house until the rightful owner can be traced. One day, Lucy is walking in the garden to explore and to pick flowers when she meets Sara and Georgie. It becomes clear that the children are ghosts, children of the house who died 100 years ago in the fire that destroyed the estate. It's a gentle, thoughtful ghost story, of parallel time and the chance to make amends for mistakes in an earlier life. The novel won the Carnegie Medal and was filmed in 1972 as The Amazing Mr Blunden . 10. The Woman in Black by Susan Hill (1982) For my money, the greatest of the contemporary ghost writers. Hill creates believable period characters, she creates a hermetic world that yet speaks of wider superstitions and histories, and creates plots with tension, pace and jeopardy without ever becoming heavy-handed.

This is a story of vengeance, of an old curse from an embittered woman, all centred on the brooding Eel Marsh House, gloomy and isolated and cut off from the mainland at high tide. As the tension of premonition and disaster builds and builds, the ghostly screams of an accident long ago will haunt the reader's imagination long after the last page has been turned. Perfect. Kate Mosse - Literature Literature Biography Kate Mosse is an author and broadcaster. The Co-Founder of the Women's Prize for Fiction (formerly known as the Orange Prize for Fiction or OPF) and the Orange Award for New Writers (OANW), she is also a former Executive Director of Chichester Festival Theatre. With her husband, author and teacher Greg Mosse, she teaches creative writing at West Dean College, West Sussex. She is a Trustee of Arts & Business and the South West Sussex Arts Group. Her short stories and articles have been published in a wide range of newspapers, magazines and anthologies, including: The Observer, the Independent on Saturday, the Independent on Sunday, The Guardian, The Times, The Sunday Times, Harpers Bazaar, the New Statesman and the Financial Times.

Her non-fiction books are Becoming a Mother (1993) and The House: inside the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (1995), the book of the award-winning BBC television series. Her novels are Eskimo Kissing (1996); Crucifix Lane (1998), a thriller; and the number one best-selling Labyrinth, an adventure novel set partly in 13th-century Carcassone and partly in present day south west France. Labyrinth has been translated into 37 languages, and has sold over a million copies in English to date. Her novel, Sepulchre (2007), is set in France in 1891 and 2007. Her latest books are The Cave (2009) and The Winter Ghosts (2009). A regular guest on television and radio in the UK, she presented the flagship BBC 4 series, The Readers & Writers Roadshow, and is the Book Reviewer for The Culture Show on BBC 2. For BBC Radio 4, she is guest presenter of Saturday Review and Open Book.

Kate Mosse is a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts, won the 2000 European Woman of Achievement Award for her contribution to the Arts, and was awarded an honorary MA from University College, Chichester. She was awarded an MBE int he Queen's birthday honours list in 2013. She and her family live in West Sussex and Carcassonne, south west France. Critical perspective Kate Mosse studied English at New College, Oxford and went on to work in the publishing industry. In 1996, she co-founded the Orange Prize for Fiction, which was renamed the Women's Prize for fiction in 2013. This award is open to women of all nationalities writing in English and was devised to give greater publicity to women writers. Although this women-only prize has been the subject of controversy (because it is women-only), it continues to be a valued award. It was originally established as a means to offer a balance to the male-dominated literary awards circuit, as many of the main prizes (such as the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1991 in particular) have often overlooked female novelists.

In terms of Mosse’s work as an author, her first published book is the non-fictional Becoming a Mother (1993) and is concerned with pregnancy and giving birth. It uses the perspectives of mothers and also draws on medical facts to act as a guide through pregnancy. She was inspired to write it after finding there were no such books to help her as a would-be mother and interviewed around 40 women to find out about their experiences. Her second work of non-fiction, The House: Inside the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (1995), is an accompaniment to the popular BBC television documentary series. Prior to Labyrinth, her two previous novels were considered strong works, but received relatively low-key acclaim. The first, Eskimo Kissing (1996), is concerned with a poignant search for identity through the use of twins and the theme of adoption. Her second novel is Crucifix Lane (1998), which is a time-travel thriller set in London. This also uses environmental issues to drive the plot. Labyrinth, Mosse’s third novel, is a work of historical fiction which may also be classified as another grail novel.

It should be remembered, though, that Mosse began her detailed research before the publication and massive sales of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2003). The success of Labyrinth may be linked with Geraldine Bedell’s description of it as ‘commercial fiction’ (31 July 2005). It is a lengthy work, over 500 pages, but the plot has a double strand and the movement between the two connected narratives ensures the reader’s attention is maintained. The pace is fast and, to use a clichéd term, is truly a ‘page turner’. Furthermore, the popularity of the novel may be explained by the way it feeds the reading public’s desire for explanations, as has been argued by Mosse (in interview with Marriane Brace) in her attempt to explain the high sales of (Independent, 15 July 2005). It is also evident in the reading of Labyrinth that this is well-researched and convincing in its historical references and occasional use of the Occitan language; Mosse incorporates the mass of background detail smoothly so that it does not intrude on the action.

The main setting in Labyrinth is Carcassonne, in the southwest of France and where Mosse has had a home since 1990. The persecution of the Cathars in this region in the 13th century is one of the central themes. The narrative is divided into two different time schemes (the 21st and 13th centuries) and these periods are connected with the parallel adventures of the central heroines, Alice and Alaïs. The twin narratives of the past and present collide as Alice is drawn to repeat Alaïs’s history in order to protect the sacred books that lead to the grail. This novel differs from the standard adventure story, as the central protagonists, both good and evil, are female. Bedell’s review notes this use of female characters: ‘Labyrinth is very much a Girl’s Own Story: a grail quest in which women aren’t helpless creatures to be rescued, or decorative bystanders, but central to the action, with the capacity to change history. The villains, in both eras, are also women’ (Observer, 31 July 2005).

Further to this, in her interview with Brace, Mosse explains that she wanted her women to have, ‘lovely frocks, sex and swords and don’t wait to be rescued’ (Independent 15 July 2005). When considering this statement in a more serious context, it is possible to see that the writing of this novel has been at least partially driven by the same impetus for equal gender representation that inspired Mosse to help initiate the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her more recent novel, Sepulchre (2007), is also set in the southwest of France and similarly draws on two main time frames. This is set in the present and the nineteenth century, and uses Tarot cards as a central plot device. Mosse’s interest in literature and the writing process is reflected in her roles as author and critic. She is also involved in the teaching of writing, along with her husband (at West Dean College, Sussex), and this desire to make the various stages of writing a novel overt has been made manifest in her website ( ). This focuses on both the writing of Labyrinth and on the harnessing of the creative process.

She describes this as a six-year online experiment to share the various stages of novel writing and to encourage other writers. Dr Julie Ellam, 2007 Sepulchre by Kate Mosse: Ghosts from the machine - Telegraph Sepulchre by Kate Mosse: Ghosts from the machine Has Mosse exorcised the monster in the dungeon? 12:01AM GMT 17 Nov 2007 Artemis Cooper reviews Sepulchre by Kate Mosse Listen to an extract from Sepulchre It has never happened to me, but I expect that having a bestseller turns your career into something of a haunted house. The reception rooms present a sunlit enfilade of interviews, literary festivals, book signings and television appearances; but down the basement stairs, behind the locked door of the dungeon, a hideous thought is gibbering in the dark: will I ever be able to pull this off again? So spare a thought for Kate Mosse, who had to write the book to follow her magnificent Grail-gripper Labyrinth (2005). The result is a Tarot-turner called Sepulchre, another beautiful three-syllable word suggesting death, mystery and romance.

Like Labyrinth, it takes place in southwest France and tells two stories in parallel: one set in 2007, the other in 1891. Living in fin-de-siècle Paris, Léonie Vernier is equipped with the large green eyes, mane of curls and appetite for Gothic novels that traditionally identify the heroine of a Gothic novel. When her handsome older brother, Anatole, announces that he will accompany her to the Midi to visit to their widowed Aunt Isolde, she is delighted. She is also puzzled that Anatole insists on leaving Paris in such haste, taking pains to cover their tracks. Their destination is the Domaine de la Cade near Rennes-les-Bains, a spacious house in a run-down estate complete with sinister woods. Their aunt is much younger than Léonie expected, and Anatole seems very protective of her. Léonie's adventure starts when she finds a book by her late uncle. It describes how, in a sepulchre in the woods, he raised the spirit of a devil using a combination of music and certain symbolic figures from the Tarot.

Léonie begins sketching a set of Tarot cards, and draws herself as the figure of La Force. Beside Léonie's story runs that of a young dark-haired American, Meredith Martin, who lives in the present day and is writing a book on Claude Debussy. She checks into the Domaine de la Cade, now a country hotel, because she wants to trace her family history at Rennes-les-Bains and learn more about her beautiful, suicidal mother. Before leaving Paris, she warily agrees to a Tarot reading, and is startled to see that the figure symbolising La Justice looks just like her. Mosse relishes all the traditional Gothic props, and isn't afraid of stoking up the suspense with storms, violent deaths, malevolently superstitious villagers, the threat of horrible evil and a mad old gardener who feels it approaching: "'Twenty-one years ago,' he muttered, 'late master raised the devil.

Music comes when the ghosts are walking out of the tomb… When the storm come, the spirits are released to walk.'" This is all good fun and frissons for aficionados of the genre like me, who like seeing the familiar devices at work – it's like meeting old friends at a cocktail party. (Another old friend in this book is Audric Baillard, the ancient keeper of secrets who played a central role in Labyrinth.) Yet in Sepulchre, there is almost too much else going on. Quite apart from the Tarot cards and the music, there are references to the Fibonacci numbers, Visigothic tombs, and passages of over-plotting designed to incorporate a sequence of four elements. There are also frequent references to the real-life Abbé Saunière of Rennes-le-Château, who became suspiciously rich in the 1880s. Rumour was that he had dug up Visigothic texts and treasure, though subsequent enquiries revealed that the Abbé's wealth came from selling masses, not manuscripts. But his legend, assiduously fanned by faked parchments and the tourist trade, has already inspired several quasi-fictional blockbusters.

All this richness of detail masks a certain lack of tension at the heart of the book. Labyrinth was written with passion and energy, the two strands of the story locked together by an urgent internal logic. Sepulchre certainly has its dramatic moments, but the destinies of Léonie and Meredith are more loosely linked. The whole story is contained in the eight cards of the so-called "Vernier Tarot", supposedly drawn by Léonie, which appear on the end papers. For those not familiar with the Tarot this is helpful, and I did keep referring to them – but their modern clothes and "because-you're-worth-it" expressions are irritatingly anachronistic. The real problem is that Tarot cards act as symbols on a number of levels: so using them as a device to drive the plot leaves a number of loose ends trailing behind. Has Mosse exorcised the monster in the dungeon? I think so, even if this is not as strong a book as its predecessor. She remains a powerful storyteller with an abundant imagination, and I'm sure there are still any number of mysterious, padlocked chests waiting to be explored in her attic.

Kate Mosse: my skill is storytelling, not literary fiction | Books | The Guardian The Observer Kate Mosse: my skill is storytelling, not literary fiction The bestselling author explains how, through creativity and connecting with readers, novelists can still thrive in a digital age Kate Mosse pictured in the Covent Garden Hotel, London. Photograph: Andy Hall for the Observer Saturday 30 August 2014 18.30 EDT First published on Saturday 30 August 2014 18.30 EDT Close This article is 2 years old Ever since the millennium, the e-revolution, plus the credit crunch, has sponsored all kinds of apocalyptic predictions about books, with regular bad news from the digital frontline. In America, even bestselling authors such as Malcolm Gladwell have taken to YouTube to denounce Big Brother, aka Amazon. In Britain, book-selling is said to be on the rocks, libraries doomed, the ebook all-conquering, with the Visigoths of online selling storming through Waterstone's. Earnings are down and contracts scarce, putting careers in crisis and livelihoods at risk.

In 2013 the median income of the professional writer was about £11,000, well below the £16,850 which the Joseph Rowntree Foundation considers a minimum standard of living. And that's before you even begin to address the creative questions. Last May, Booker-nominated novelist Will Self added his thunderous tones to a Stygian chorus mourning the fate of literary fiction. "How do you think it feels," he boomed, "to have dedicated your entire adult life to an art form, only to see the bloody thing dying before your eyes?" Amid the gloom, however, there has been one tireless Pollyanna of print, an optimistic literary entrepreneur for whom the glass is not merely half full but positively running over. Kate Mosse , bestselling author of the Languedoc Trilogy (Labyrinth, Sepulchre and Citadel), and champion of the prize formerly known as Orange, has become the smiley face of English writing during the credit crunch and the IT revolution, and an indefatigable advocate for an old-fashioned creativity. Mosse is a stranger to Selfian angst. She brings a rare and infectious energy to her life as a writer reminiscent of the Victorians.

For instance, while completing her door-stopping (more than 2,000 pages) trilogy, she also revelled in her role as co-founder of the Orange prize. Despite Mosse's public face, this was no picnic. When, in 2012, Orange withdrew its sponsorship, some speculated that the game was up for the English-speaking world's premier writing prize for women. The crisis would have fazed anyone less skilled at contemporary arts management. Eventually, Mosse's board, including successful and determined women such as Martha Lane Fox, prevailed. They announced a one-off renewal of the Women's Prize for Fiction , funded by some private benefactors led by Cherie Blair and Joanna Trollope. Meanwhile, Mosse devoted herself full-time to overseeing a year of private sponsorship to keep the prize alive. Looking back, she says: "It was impossible for me to be writing in 2013, and that was really disappointing." Her sacrifice paid off. The Women's Prize for Fiction confounded every prediction of imminent disaster.

In the spring of 2013 it carried on as if Orange had never quit, gave its prize to AM Holmes for May We Be Forgiven, then announced a new sponsor, Baileys Irish Cream. Some of the commentariat expressed dismay. Was a sickly-sweet liqueur an appropriate replacement for a communications giant? But when the first Baileys prize was awarded in May to Eimear McBride's A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, it looked like business as usual. The Bookseller calculated that, of the five top-selling prize novels in shops, four were Orange titles. Mosse says now: "I couldn't be more thrilled about that first year. This new team has revitalised us. 2014 was a huge relief. And I was allowed to be a writer again." Just weeks after the inaugural Baileys prize, Mosse delivered her own new novel. In keeping with her Victorian literary ethos, she had managed to keep her creative and her managerial lives flourishing. "Your writing voice," she maintains, "is not necessarily your reading voice." In January, with the prize going full steam ahead, Mosse had begun to work on a gothic thriller. Its subject? Taxidermy.

"Strange, but true," she says with a laugh. On closer examination, however, Mosse's latest fiction reflects both her unquenchable optimism and her instinctive understanding of her strengths as a writer. The Taxidermist's Daughter will be launched on 11 September at the Horniman Museum in south London , with an event for 1,000 people. In anticipation of her big night, Mosse describes the massive poster of herself hanging outside the Horniman with merry candour. "I look like a mad person," she says. Perhaps Mosse is exhilarated by the fulfilment of a gothic fantasy. The Taxidermist's Daughter, a whodunnit and a whydunnit, takes its inspiration from Mosse's childhood fascination with a celebrated Sussex tourist attraction, Walter Potter's Museum of Curiosities. This lost Victorian collection of bizarre tableaux, such as The Original Death and Burial of Cock Robin, was "my favourite outing", says Mosse. Crucially, it was this strange kaleidoscope of kitsch, mortality and fancy dress that nurtured her adolescent appetite for storytelling, an unabashed desire to entertain.

So when Mosse decided to write a gothic thriller, it was perhaps no surprise that she should focus on the strange, obsessive world of the taxidermist. Less predictable, though characteristic of her attention to detail, was her decision to learn the trade. Simultaneously with completing the first draft, Mosse took instruction in "how to skin and stuff animals". Is this embalming? "Embalming is different," she corrects. "Before movies, taxidermy was how things were remembered, and part of the working life of British high streets." The Taxidermist's Daughter is not, however, just about feathers, fur and skin in the heyday of a forgotten art form. It is also set just before the Great War, in the summer of 1912, the wettest summer of the last century, among the marshes of Fishbourne, West Sussex, in an atmosphere of imminent dread. The tide is rising, the sky is falling, and there's a terrible, unmentionable secret in the young life of Connie Gifford. As a genre writer, says Mosse, "I've come out.

It's Mill on the Floss meets Psycho." She also pays homage to other classics in the gothic tradition – The Castle of Otranto, Frankenstein and The Monk – but insists that Connie is "not a victim", like most gothic heroines, but a "modern Ms". So, following the rebranding of the Women's Prize for Fiction, Mosse has gone on to give a three-part masterclass in How to Survive as a Writer in the 21st century. First, she has reanimated a familiar genre, coming up with "a good, old-fashioned story". Second, she has demonstrated how to write from a powerful connection to her true self. Once, in the 1990s, Mosse wrote literary fiction with titles like Eskimo Kissing. Not any more. "I realised," she admits, "that I should have listened to myself sooner. My skill is storytelling, not literary fiction." Finally, she has connected her creative life to everyday experience. Challenge her overcrowded schedule, and she retorts: "Every writer I know does lots of different things. I know very few writers who are able just to survive by writing novels. It always used to be like that.

For me, being out and about is essential. I'm not interested in writing stories where people reflect a lot. I prefer them to do things. The bit that I like least is sitting on my own, writing." She also dismisses Self and the Jeremiahs: "The market is tough, but ebooks have not changed things as much as people feared." Besides, for every Mosse reader, there's a practical dividend to her R&D. "Once you have read The Taxidermist's Daughter," she concludes, with a mischievous smile, "you'll be able to skin your own crow." • This article was amended on 1 September 2014 to add a link to the Horniman Museum's £10-a-ticket event to launch Kate Mosse's new book, The Taxidermist's Daughter.

Question: Who wrote the best selling novels Labyrinth and Sepulchre?
Answer: Kate Mosse